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Linguistic Discussions. 



one very important fact overlooked by many writers and thinkers on 

 the origin of our Janguage : and that is, that the portion of words in- 

 troduced by the Normans are not French words — that is, they arc not 

 taken from what is known to-day as the French hmguage. The truth 

 is tliat when the crown of Harold was placed on the brow of the Nor- 

 man duke, and England portioned out among his followers, the lan- 

 guage which they brouglit with them was really but one dialect sti ug- 

 gling for supremacy with two or three others within the borders of 

 what is now the republic of France. Although it then bade fair to 

 take lead as did the Castilian in Spain, and the Tuscan in Italy, yet 

 as time went on, the dialect of the Province of the Isle de Paris be- 

 came the standard of the Gallic tongue. Wc are, then, not to look to 

 modern French for the standard in form and pronunciation of our 

 Gallic words, but to the old Norman French. A few words will illus- 

 trate the truth of this statement. Thus it would not be easy to ex- 

 plain the discrepancy between the French words gloire and our glory ^ 

 memoire and our memory, vidoire and our victory, ivoire and our 

 n'ory but when we discover in the Norman writings that have come 

 down to ns from that period, that these words in that dialect took the 

 same form as ours with the exception that in spelling they terminated 

 in ie instead of y, the case is self-evident. The Normans said memory 

 as we say memory. And moreover, the same termination is continued in 

 English books down to the 17th century. — The same is true of an- 

 other class of words, like honor — French lionneur, but Norman honor, 

 and later honour with the accent on the last syllable. And so the ad- 

 jective glorious had the same form exactly in the Norman dialect, while 

 it took that of glorieux in the French. The same may be said of joyous 

 hideous, courageous and many others : perhaps all of this class of ad- 

 jectives. Again we observe in old English a general disposition to 

 spell words now ending in ance and ant with, an additional u, as 

 graunt, chaunt, avaunt, chaunce, launce, and even chaumhre. The 

 pronunciation, however, was not affected by the u, and was the 

 same probably as that we now give to these words. But this was a 

 Norman orthography, and does not appear in the French forms of 

 these words, neither at that date nor any time since. The appeal to 

 the real source of the Gallic portion of our language brings in evidence 

 to settle another disputed question of the dictionary men : shall Ave 

 write centre or center ? Octolre or October ? Those ancestors of 

 ours (if we ever had any such) who came over with the conqueror 

 wrote these words as Webster spells them, ending in er, while their 

 Isle de Paris neighbors on the east followed Worcester, who, by the 

 way hasn't yet conformed the spelling of his own name to this rule. 



